Pascal Getreuer, February 2009

Contents
Page

1 Introduction

2 The Proler

3 Array Preallocation

4 JIT Acceleration

5 Vectorization

6 Inlining Simple Functions

14

7 Referencing Operations

16

8 Solving Ax = b

19

9 Numerical Integration

22

10 Signal Processing

26

11 Miscellaneous

29

12 Further Reading

31

Introduction

Matlab is a prototyping environment, meaning it focuses on the ease of development with language
exibility, interactive debugging, and other conveniences lacking in performance-oriented languages like
C and Fortran. While Matlab may not be as fast as C, there are ways to bring it closer.

Disclaimer This is not a beginners tutorial to Matlab, but a tutorial on

performance. The methods discussed here are generally fast, but no claim is
made on what is fastest. Use at your own risk.

Before beginning our main topic, lets step back for a moment and ask ourselves what we really want. Do
we want the fastest possible code?if so, we should switch to a performance language like C. Probably
more accurately, we want to spend less time total from developing, debugging, running, and until nally
obtaining results. This section gives some tips on working smart, not hard.

M-Lint Messages
In more recent versions of Matlab, the integrated editor automatically gives feedback on possible code
errors and suggested optimizations. These messages are helpful in improving a program and in learning
more about Matlab.
for k = 1:NumTrials
r = rand;
x(k) = runsim(r);
x might be growing inside a loop. Consider preallocating for speed.
end
hist(x);

% Plot histogram of simulation outputs

Hold the mouse cursor over underlined code to read a message. Or, see all M-Lint messages at once
:::::::::::::::
with Tools M-Lint Show M-Lint Report.

Organization
Use a separate folder for each project.

A separate folder for each project keeps related things together and simplies making copies and
backups of project les.
Write header comments, especially H1.

The rst line of the header comment is called the H1 comment. Type help(cd) to get a listing
of all project les and their H1 comments.

 Save frequent console commands as a script.

If you nd yourself repeating certain commands on the console, save them as a script. Less typing
means fewer opportunities for typos.

Avoid losing data

Dont use clear all in a script.

This is an unfortunate common practiceany important variables in the base workspace will be
irretrievably lost.
Beware of clobber.

File clobber refers to the kind of data loss when a le is accidentally overwritten with another
one having the same lename. This phenomenon can occur with variables as well:
>> result = big operation(input1);
...
>> result = big operation(input2);

% Store the result of a timeconsuming operation

% Run again with another input

Variable result was clobbered and the rst output was lost.
Beware of what can crash MATLAB.

While Matlab is generally reliable, crashes are possible when using third-party MEX functions
or extremely memory-intensive operations, for example, with video and very large arrays.
Now with good working habits covered, we begin our discussion of writing fast Matlab code. The rest
of this article is organized by topic, rst on techniques that are useful in general application, and next
on specic computational topics (table of contents is on the rst page).

The Proler

Matlab 5.0 (R10) and newer versions include a tool called the proler that helps identify bottlenecks
in a program. Use it with the profile command:
profile
profile
profile
profile

on
off
clear
report

Turn the proler on

Turn it back o
Clear prole statistics
View the results from the proler

For example, consider proling the following function:

function result = example1(Count)
for k = 1:Count
result(k) = sin(k/50);
if result(k) < 0.9
result(k) = gammaln(k);
end
end

To analyze the eciency this function, rst enable and clear the proler, run the function, and then
view the prole report:
>> profile on, profile clear
>> example1(5000);
>> profile report

There is a slight parsing overhead when running code for the rst time; run the test code twice and time
the second run. The profiler report command shows a report. Depending on the system, proler
results may dier from this example.

MATLAB Prole Report: Summary

Report generated 30-Jul-2004 16:57:01
Total recorded time:
Number of M-functions:
Clock precision:

3.09 s
4
0.016 s

Function List
Name

Time

Time

example1

3.09

100.0%

gammaln

0.73

23.7%

3562

profile

0.00

0.0%

profreport

0.00

0.0%

Time/call

Self time

Location

3.094000

2.36

76.3%

~/example1.m

0.000206

0.73

23.7%

../toolbox/matlab/specfun/gammaln.m

0.000000

0.00

0.0%

../toolbox/matlab/general/profile.m

0.000000

0.00

0.0%

../toolbox/matlab/general/profreport.m

Clicking the example1 link gives more details:

Lines where the most time was spent
Line Number

Code

Calls

Total Time

% Time

4
7
6

result(k) = sin(k/50);

5000
721
5000

2.11
0.84
0.14
3.09

68%
27%
5%
100%

result(k) = gammaln(k);
if result(k) < -0.9

Totals

s
s
s
s

The most time-consuming lines are displayed, along with time, time percentage, and line number. The
most costly lines are the computations on lines 4 and 7.
Another helpful section of the prole report is M-Lint Results, which gives feedback from the M-Lint
code analyzer. Possible errors and suggestions are listed here.
M-Lint results
Line number

Message

4
7

result might be growing inside a loop. Consider preallocating for speed.

result might be growing inside a loop. Consider preallocating for speed.

(Preallocation is discussed in the next section.)

The proler has limited time resolution, so to prole a piece of code that runs too quickly, run the test
code multiple times with a loop. Adjust the number of loop iterations so that the time it takes to run
is noticeable. More iterations yields better time resolution.
The proler is an essential tool for identifying bottlenecks and per-statement analysis, however, for
more accurate timing of a piece of code, use the tic/toc stopwatch timer.
>> tic; example1(5000); toc;
Elapsed time is 3.082055 seconds

For serious benchmarking, also close your web browser, anti-virus, and other background processes that
may be taking CPU cycles.

Array Preallocation

Matlabs matrix variables have the ability to dynamically augment rows and columns. For example,
>> a = 2
a =
2
>> a(2,6) = 1
a =
2
0

0
0

0
0

0
0

0
0

0
1

Matlab automatically resizes the matrix. Internally, the matrix data memory must be reallocated
with larger size. If a matrix is resized repeatedlylike within a loopthis overhead can be signicant.
To avoid frequent reallocations, preallocate the matrix with the zeros command.
Consider the code:
a(1) = 1;
b(1) = 0;
for k = 2:8000
a(k) = 0.99803 * a(k 1) 0.06279 * b(k 1);
b(k) = 0.06279 * a(k 1) + 0.99803 * b(k 1);
end

This code takes 0.47 seconds to run. After the for loop, both arrays are row vectors of length 8000,
thus to preallocate, create empty a and b row vectors each with 8000 elements.
a = zeros(1,8000);
b = zeros(1,8000);
a(1) = 1;
b(1) = 0;

% Preallocation

for k = 2:8000
a(k) = 0.99803 * a(k 1) 0.06279 * b(k 1);
b(k) = 0.06279 * a(k 1) + 0.99803 * b(k 1);
end

With this modication, the code takes only 0.14 seconds (over three times faster). Preallocation is often
easy to do, in this case it was only necessary to determine the right preallocation size and add two lines.

What if the nal array size can vary? Here is an example:

a = zeros(1,10000);
count = 0;

% Preallocate

for k = 1:10000
v = exp(rand*rand);
if v > 0.5
% Conditionally add to array
count = count + 1;
a(count) = v;
end
end
a = a(1:count);

% Trim extra zeros from the results

The average run time of this program is 0.42 seconds without preallocation and 0.18 seconds with it.
Preallocation is also benecial for cell arrays, using the cell command to create a cell array of the
desired size.

JIT Acceleration

Matlab 6.5 (R13) and later feature the Just-In-Time (JIT) Accelerator for improving the speed of
M-functions, particularly with loops. By knowing a few things about the accelerator, you can improve
its performance.
The JIT Accelerator is enabled by default. To disable it, type feature accel off in the console,
and feature accel on to enable it again.
As of Matlab R2008b, only a subset of the Matlab language is supported for acceleration. Upon
encountering an unsupported feature, acceleration processing falls back to non-accelerated evaluation.
Acceleration is most eective when signicant contiguous portions of code are supported.
Data types: Code must use supported data types for acceleration: double (both real and
complex), logical, char, int832, uint832. Some struct, cell, classdef, and function
handle usage is supported. Sparse arrays are not accelerated.
Array shapes: Array shapes of any size with 3 or fewer dimensions are supported. Changing the
shape or data type of an array interrupts acceleration. A few limited situations with 4D arrays
are accelerated.
Function calls: Calls to built-in functions and M-functions are accelerated. Calling MEX functions and Java interrupts acceleration. (See also page 14 on inlining simple functions.)
Conditionals and loops: The conditional statements if, elseif, and simple switch statements
are supported if the conditional expression evaluates to a scalar. Loops of the form for k=a:b,
for k=a:b:c, and while loops are accelerated if all code within the loop is supported.

In-place computation
Introduced in Matlab 7.3 (R2006b), the element-wise operators (+, .*, etc.) and some other functions
can be computed in-place. That is, a computation like
x = 5*sqrt(x.2 + 1);

is handled internally without needing temporary storage for accumulating the result. An M-function
can also be computed in-place if its output argument matches one of the input arguments.
x = myfun(x);
function x = myfun(x)
x = 5*sqrt(x.2 + 1);
return;

To enable in-place computation, the in-place operation must be within an M-function (and for an inplace function, the function itself must be called within an M-function). Currently, there is no support
for in-place computation with MEX-functions.

Multithreaded Computation
Matlab 7.4 (R2007a) introduced multithreaded computation for multicore and multiprocessor computers. Multithreaded computation accelerates some per-element functions when applied to large arrays
(for example, .^, sin, exp) and certain linear algebra functions in the BLAS library. To enable it, select
File Preferences General Multithreading and select Enable multithreaded computation. Further control over parallel computation is possible with the Parallel Computing Toolbox using parfor
and spmd.

JIT-Accelerated Example
For example, the following loop-heavy code is supported for acceleration:
function B = bilateral(A,sd,sr,R)
% The bilateral image denoising filter
B = zeros(size(A));
for i = 1:size(A,1)
for j = 1:size(A,2)
zsum = 0;
for m = R:R
if i+m >= 1 && i+m <= size(A,1)
for n = R:R
if j+n >= 1 && j+n <= size(A,2)
z = exp((A(i+m,j+n) A(i,j))2/(2*sd2))...
* exp((m2 + n2)/(2*sr2));
zsum = zsum + z;
B(i,j) = B(i,j) + z*A(i+m,j+n);
end
end
end
end
B(i,j) = B(i,j)/zsum;
end
end

For a 128 128 input image and R = 3, the run time is 53.3 seconds without acceleration and 0.68
seconds with acceleration.

Vectorization

A computation is vectorized by taking advantage of vector operations. A variety of programming

situations can be vectorized, and often improving speed to 10 times faster or even better. Vectorization
is one of the most general and eective techniques for writing fast M-code.

5.1 Vectorized Computations

Many standard Matlab functions are vectorized: they can operate on an array as if the function
had been applied individually to every element.
>> sqrt([1,4;9,16])

>> abs([0,1,2,5,6,7])

ans =
1
3

ans =
2
4

Consider the following function:

function d = minDistance(x,y,z)
% Find the min distance between a set of points and the origin
nPoints = length(x);
d = zeros(nPoints,1);

% Preallocate

for k = 1:nPoints
% Compute distance for every point
d(k) = sqrt(x(k)2 + y(k)2 + z(k)2);
end
d = min(d);

% Get the minimum distance

For every point, its distance from the origin is computed and stored in d. For speed, array d is
preallocated (see Section 3). The minimum distance is then found with min. To vectorize the distance
computation, replace the for loop with vector operations:
function d = minDistance(x,y,z)
% Find the min distance between a set of points and the origin
d = sqrt(x.2 + y.2 + z.2);
d = min(d);

% Compute distance for every point

% Get the minimum distance

The modied code performs the distance computation with vector operations. The x, y and z arrays
are rst squared using the per-element power operator, .^ (the per-element operators for multiplication
and division are .* and ./). The squared components are added with vector addition. Finally, the
square root of the vector sum is computed per element, yielding an array of distances. (A further
improvement: it is equivalent to compute d = sqrt(min(x.^2 + y.^2 + z.^2))).

The rst version of the minDistance program takes 0.73 seconds on 50000 points. The vectorized
version takes less than 0.04 seconds, more than 18 times faster.
Some useful functions for vectorizing computations:
min, max, repmat, meshgrid, sum, cumsum, diff, prod, cumprod, accumarray

5.2 Vectorized Logic

The previous section shows how to vectorize pure computation. But bottleneck code often involves
conditional logic. Like computations, Matlabs logic operators are vectorized:
>> [1,5,3] < [2,2,4]
ans =
1

Two arrays are compared per-element. Logic operations return logical arrays with binary values.
How is this useful? Matlab has a few powerful functions for operating on logical arrays:
>> find([1,5,3] < [2,2,4]) % Find indices of nonzero elements
ans =
1

>> any([1,5,3] < [2,2,4])

% True if any element of a vector is nonzero

% (or percolumn for a matrix)

ans =
1
>> all([1,5,3] < [2,2,4])

% True if all elements of a vector are nonzero

% (or percolumn for a matrix)

ans =
0

Vectorized logic also works on arrays.

>> find(eye(3) == 1)

% Find which elements == 1 in the 3x3 identity matrix

ans =
1
5
9

% (element locations given as indices)

By default, find returns element locations as indices (see page 16 for indices vs. subscripts).

10

Example 1: Vector Normalization

To normalize a single vector v to unit length, one can use v = v/norm(v). However, to use norm for
set of vectors v(:,1), v(:,2), . . . requires computing v(:,k)/norm(v(:,k)) in a loop. Alternatively,
vMag = sqrt(sum(v.2));
v = v./vMag(ones(1,size(v,1)),:);

Example 2: Removing elements

The situation often arises where array elements must be removed on some per-element condition. For
example, this code removes all NaN and innite elements from an array x:
i = find(isnan(x) | isinf(x));
x(i) = [];

% Find bad elements in x

% and delete them

Alternatively,
i = find(isnan(x) & isinf(x));
x = x(i);

% Find elements that are not NaN and not infinite

% Keep those elements

Both of these solutions can be further streamlined by using logical indexing:

x(isnan(x) | isinf(x)) = [];

% Delete bad elements

or
x = x(isnan(x) & isinf(x));

% Keep good elements

Example 3: Piecewise functions

The sinc function has a piecewise denition,
sinc(x) =

sin(x)/x,
1,

x=0
x=0

This code uses find with vectorized computation to handle the two cases separately:
function y = sinc(x)
% Computes the sinc function perelement for a set of x values.
y = ones(size(x));
i = find(x = 0);
y(i) = sin(x(i)) ./ x(i);

% Set y to all ones, sinc(0) = 1

% Find nonzero x values
% Compute sinc where x = 0

A concise alternative is y = (sin(x) + (x == 0))./(x + (x == 0)).

11

Example 4: Drawing images with meshgrid

The meshgrid function takes two input vectors and converts them to matrices by replicating the rst
over the rows and the second over the columns.
>> [x,y] = meshgrid(1:5,1:3)
y =

x =
1
1
1

2
2
2

3
3
3

4
4
4

1
2
3

5
5
5

1
2
3

1
2
3

1
2
3

1
2
3

The matrices above work like a map for a width 5, height 3 image. For each pixel, the x-location can
be read from x and the y-location from y. This may seem like a gratuitous use of memory as x and y
simply record the column and row positions, but this is useful. For example, to draw an ellipse,
% Create x and y for a width 150, height 100 image
[x,y] = meshgrid(1:150,1:100);
% Ellipse with origin (60,50) of size 15 x 40
Img = sqrt(((x60).2 / 152) + ((y50).2 / 402)) > 1;
% Plot the image
imagesc(Img); colormap(copper);
axis image, axis off

Drawing lines is just a change in the formula.

[x,y] = meshgrid(1:150,1:100);
% The line y = x*0.8 + 20
Img = (abs((x*0.8 + 20) y) > 1);
imagesc(Img); colormap(copper);
axis image, axis off

Polar functions can be drawn by rst converting x and y variables with the cart2pol function.
[x,y] = meshgrid(1:150,1:100);
[th,r] = cart2pol(x 75,y 50);

% Convert to polar

% Spiral centered at (75,50)

Img = sin(r/3 + th);
imagesc(Img); colormap(hot);
axis image, axis off

12

Example 5: Polynomial interpolation

Given n points x1 , . . . xn and corresponding function values y1 , . . . yn , the coecients c0 , . . . , cn1 of the
interpolating polynomial
P (x) = cn1 xn1 + + c1 x + c0
can be found by solving

x1 n1

x2 n1

.
n1
xn

x1 n2
x2 n2

x1 2
x2 2

x1
x2

xn n2

xn 2

xn

1
1
.
.
.
1

cn1
cn2
.
.
.
c0

y1
y2
.
.
.
yn

function c = polyint(x,y)
% Given a set of points and function values x and y,
% computes the interpolating polynomial.
x = x(:);
y = y(:);
n = length(x);

% Make sure x and y are both column vectors

% n = Number of points

% Construct the matrix on the lefthandside

xMatrix = repmat(x, 1, n);
% Make an n by n matrix with x on every column
powMatrix = repmat(n1:1:0, n, 1);
% Make another n by n matrix of exponents
A = xMatrix . powMatrix;
% Compute the powers
c = A\y;

% Solve matrix equation for coefficients

The strategy to construct the left-hand side matrix is to rst make two nn matrices of bases and
exponents and then put them together using the per element power operator, .^ . The repmat function
(replicate matrix) is used to make the base matrix xMatrix and the exponent matrix powMatrix.

xMatrix =

x(1) x(1)
x(2) x(2)
.
.
.
x(n) x(n)

x(1)
x(2)
.
.
.
x(n)

powMatrix =

n1 n2
n1 n2
.
.
.
n1 n2

0
0
.
.
.
0

The xMatrix is made by repeating the column vector x over the columns n times. The powMatrix is a
row vector with elements n 1, n 2, n 3, . . . , 0 repeated down the rows n times. The two matrices
could also have been created with [powMatrix, xMatrix] = meshgrid(n-1:-1:0, x).
The code above is only an exampleuse the standard polyfit function for serious use.

13

Inlining Simple Functions

Every time an M-le function is called, the Matlab interpreter incurs some overhead. Additionally,
many M-le functions begin with conditional code that checks the input arguments for errors or determines the mode of operation.
Of course, this overhead is negligible for a single function call. It should only be considered when the
function being called is an M-le, the function itself is simple, that is, implemented with only a few
lines, and called frequently from within a loop.
For example, this code calls the M-le function median repeatedly to perform median ltering:
% Apply the median filter of size 5 to signal x
y = zeros(size(x)); % Preallocate
for k = 3:length(x)2
y(k) = median(x(k2:k+2));
end

Given a 2500-sample array for x, the overall run time is 0.42 seconds.
Inlining a function means to replace a call to the function with the function code itself. Beware that
inlining should not be confused with Matlabs inline function datatype. Studying median.m (type
edit median on the console) reveals that most of the work is done using the built-in sort function.
The median call can be inlined as
% Apply the median filter of size 5 to signal x
y = zeros(size(x)); % Preallocate
for k = 3:length(x)2
tmp = sort(x(k2:k+2));
y(k) = tmp(3);
% y(k) = median(x(k2:k+2));
end

Now the overall run time is 0.047 seconds, nearly 9 times faster. Furthermore, by inlining median, it
can be specically tailored to evaluating 5-sample medians. But this is only an example; if the Signal
Processing Toolbox is available, y = medfilt1(x,5) is much faster.
A surprising number of Matlabs functions are implemented as M-les, of which many can be inlined
in just a few lines. In Matlab 5.3 (R11), the following functions are worth inlining:
conv, cross, fft2, fliplr, flipud, ifft, ifft2, ifftn, ind2sub, ismember, linspace, logspace,
mean, median, meshgrid, poly, polyval, repmat, roots, rot90, setdiff, setxor, sortrows, std,
sub2ind, union, unique, var
The list above is for Matlab R11; some of these functions have since become built-in. Use the which
command or try edit function name to determine whether a function is implemented as an M-le.

14

For example, in Matlab R11 and earlier, ifft was implemented by simply calling fft and conj. If x
is a one-dimensional array, y = ifft(x) can be inlined with y = conj(fft(conj(x)))/length(x).
Another example: b = unique(a) can be inlined with
b = sort(a(:));

b( b((1:end1)') == b((2:end)') ) = [];

While repmat has the generality to operate on matrices, it is often only necessary to tile a vector or
just a scalar. To repeat a column vector y over the columns n times,
A = y(:,ones(1,n));

% Equivalent to A = repmat(y,1,n);

To repeat a row vector x over the rows m times,

A = x(ones(1,m),:);

% Equivalent to A = repmat(x,m,1);

To repeat a scalar s into an mn matrix,

A = s(ones(m,n));

% Equivalent to A = repmat(s,m,n);

This method avoids the overhead of calling an M-le function. It is never slower than repmat (critics
should note that repmat.m itself uses this method to construct mind and nind). For constructing
matrices with constant value, there are other ecient methods, for example, s+zeros(m,n).
Dont go overboard. Inlining functions is only benecial when the function is simple and when it is
called frequently. Doing it unnecessarily obfuscates the code.

15

Referencing Operations

Referencing in Matlab is varied and powerful enough to deserve a section of discussion. Good understanding of referencing enables vectorizing a broader range of programming situations.

7.1 Subscripts vs. Indices

Subscripts are the most common method used to refer to matrix elements, for example, A(3,9) refers
to row 3, column 9. Indices are an alternative referencing method. Consider a 10 10 matrix A.
Internally, Matlab stores the matrix data linearly as a one-dimensional, 100-element array of data in
column-major order.

1
2
3
.
.
.
10

11 21
12 22
13 23
.
.
.
.
.
.
20 30

81
82
83
.
.
.
90

91
92
93
.
.
.
100

An index refers to an elements position in this one-dimensional array. Using an index, A(83) also refers
to the element on row 3, column 9.
It is faster to scan down columns than over rows. Column-major order means that elements
along a column are sequential in memory while elements along a row are further apart. Scanning down
columns promotes cache eciency.
Conversion between subscripts and indices can be done with the sub2ind and ind2sub functions.
However, because these are M-le functions rather than fast built-in operations, it is more ecient to
compute conversions directly (also see Section 6). For a two-dimensional matrix A of size MN, the
conversions between subscript (i,j) and index (index) are
A(i,j)
A(i + (j-1)*M)
A(index) A(rem(index-1,M)+1, floor((index-1)/M)+1)
Indexing extends to N-D matrices as well, with indices increasing rst through the columns, then
through the rows, through the third dimension, and so on. Subscript notation extends intuitively,
A(. . . , dim4, dim3, row, col).

7.2 Vectorized Subscripts

It is useful to work with submatrices rather than individual elements. This is done with a vector of
indices or subscripts. If A is a two-dimensional matrix, a vector subscript reference has the syntax
A(rowv, colv)

16

where rowv and colv are vectors. Both may be of any length and their elements may be in any order.
If either is a matrix, it is reshaped to a vector. There is no dierence between using row vectors or
column vectors in vector subscripts.
Let M = length(rowv) and N = length(colv).
side returns a submatrix of size MN:

A(rowv(1), colv(1)) A(rowv(1), colv(2))

A(rowv(2), colv(1)) A(rowv(2), colv(2))

.
A(rowv(M), colv(1)) A(rowv(M), colv(2))

Then a vector subscripted matrix on the right-hand

A(rowv(1), colv(3))
A(rowv(2), colv(3))
A(rowv(M), colv(3))

A(rowv(1), colv(N))
A(rowv(2), colv(N))
.
.
.
A(rowv(M), colv(N))

A vector subscripted matrix can also appear on the left-hand side as

A(rowv, colv) = scalar or MN matrix
If any elements in the destination reference are repeated, the source element with the greater index
dominates. For example,
>> A = zeros(2); A([1,2],[2,2]) = [1,2;3,4]
A =
0
0

2
4

Vector subscript references extend intuitively in higher dimensions.

7.3 Vector Indices

Multiple elements can also be referenced with vector indices.
A(indexv)
where indexv is an array of indices. On the right-hand side, a vector index reference returns a matrix
the same size and shape as indexv. If indexv is a 3 4 matrix, then A(indexv) is the 3 4 matrix

A(indexv(1, 1)) A(indexv(1, 2)) A(indexv(1, 3)) A(indexv(1, 4))

A(indexv) = A(indexv(2, 1)) A(indexv(2, 2)) A(indexv(2, 3)) A(indexv(2, 4))

A(indexv(3, 1)) A(indexv(3, 2)) A(indexv(3, 3)) A(indexv(3, 4))
While vector subscripts are limited to referring to block-shaped submatrices, vector indices can refer to
any subset of elements.
If a vector index reference is on the left-hand side, the right-hand side must return a matrix of the same
size as indexv or a scalar. As with vector subscripts, ambiguous duplicate assignments use the value
with greater source index.
The

left- and right-hand sides (LHS and RHS) refer to the two sides of an assignment, LHS = RHS.

17

7.4 Reference Wildcards

Using the wildcard, :, in a subscript refers to an entire row or column. For example, A(:,1) refers
to every row in column onethe entire rst column. This can be combined with vector subscripts,
A([2,4],:) refers to the second and fourth rows.
When the wildcard is used in a vector index, the entire matrix is referenced. On the right-hand side,
this always returns a column vector.
A(:) = column vector
This is frequently useful: for example, if a function input must be a row vector, the users input can be
quickly reshaped into row vector with A(:). (make a column vector and transpose to a row vector).
A(:) on the left-hand side assigns all the elements of A, but does not change its size. For example,
A(:) = 8 changes all elements of matrix A to 8.

7.5 Logical Indexing

Given a logical array mask with the same size as A,
A(mask)

refers to all elements of A where the corresponding element of mask is 1 (true). It is equivalent to
A(find(mask)). A common usage of logical indexing is to refer to elements based on a per-element
condition, for example,
A(abs(A) < 1e3) = 0

sets all elements with magnitude less than 103 to zero. Logical indexing is also useful to select nonrectangular sets of elements, for example,
A(logical(eye(size(A))))

references the diagonal elements of A. Note that for a right-hand side reference, it is faster to use
diag(A) to get the diagonal of A.

7.6 Deleting Submatrices with [ ]

Elements in a matrix can be deleted by assigning the empty matrix. For example, A([3,5]) = [ ]
deletes the third and fth element from A. If this is done with index references, the matrix is reshaped
into a row vector.
It is also possible to delete with subscripts if all but one subscript are the wildcard. A(2,:)
deletes the second row. Deletions like A(2,1) = [ ] or even A(2,1:end) = [ ] are illegal.

18

= []

Solving Ax = b

Many problems involve solving a linear system, that is, solving the Ax = b problem

b1
x1
a1,1 a1,2 a1,n

a2,1 a2,2 a2,n x2 b2
.
.
. . = . .
..
.
.
. . .
.
.
.
. . .
bn
xn
an,1 an,2 an,n
The condition number cond(A) describes how sensitive the problem is to small perturbations. Matlab
can eciently approximate cond(A) with condest. Smaller condition number is better, and in this case
A is said to be well-conditioned. An innite condition number implies that A is singularthe problem
cannot be solved, though it may be solved approximately with the pseudoinverse (x = pinv(A)*b).
Small- to moderately-sized problems are solved eciently by the backslash operator:
x = A\b;

% Solves A*x = b

We shall focus on large problems.

8.1 Iterative Methods

For large problems, Matlab is well-equipped with iterative solvers: bicg, bicgstab, cgs, gmres, lsqr,
minres, pcg, symmlq, qmr. The general calling syntax (except for gmres) is
[x,flag,relres,iter,resvec] = method (A,b,tol,maxit,M1,M2,x0)
where the required arguments are the matrix A, the right-hand side b, and the solution x. The minres,
pcg, and symmlq methods require A to be symmetric (A = A) and pcg additionally requires positive
deniteness (all eigenvalues are positive). The optional input variables are
tol
maxit
M1, M2
x0

accuracy tolerance (default 106 )

maximum number of iterations (default 20)
the method uses preconditioner M = M1*M2; it solves M 1 Ax = M 1 b
initial guess

The optional output variables are

flag
relres
iter
resvec

convergence ag (0 = success, nonzero values are error codes)

relative residual b Ax / b
number of iterations
a vector listing the residual norm b Ax at each iteration

The gmres method includes one additional input,

[x,flag,relres,iter,resvec] = gmres(A,b,restart,tol,maxit,...)
The method restarts every restart iterations, or if restart=[], the method does not restart.

19

Which method works best depends on the particular problem. This diagram (adapted from Demmel [3])
provides a reasonable starting point.
Yes

A denite?

Try pcg

No
No

Yes

Is A wellconditioned?

A symmetric?
No

Is A wellYes conditioned?
available? No
Is storage
expensive?

Try minres

Yes
Yes

Try lsqr

No

Try qmr
Yes

Try cgs or bicgstab

No

Try gmres

Functional Representation
Rather than storing the matrix explicitly, it is often convenient to represent A as a linear function
acting on x. For example,

1
x1

1 1
x2
. .
A*x = .
..
.
.
.
.
.
1 1 1 xn
can be expressed as A*x = cumsum(x). In addition to being conceptually convenient, functional representation avoids the memory overhead of storing the matrix.
All the iterative solvers support functional representation, where a function handle afun is given in place
of matrix A. The function afun(x) should accept a vector x and return A*x. The help for lsqr (help
lsqr) has a functional example where A is the central dierencing operator. The bicg, lsqr, and qmr
methods also require the transpose: afun(x,notransp) should return A*x and afun(x,transp)
should return A*x. Similarly, the preconditioner may be given as a function handle mfun.

Special Matrices
For certain special matrix structures, the Ax = b problem can be solved very quickly.
Circulant matrices. Matrices corresponding to cyclic convolution Ax = h x are diagonalized in
the Fourier domain, and can be solved by x = ifft(fft(b)./fft(h));
Triangular and banded. Triangular matrices and diagonally-dominant banded matrices are solved
eciently by sparse LU factorization: [L,U] = lu(sparse(A)); x = U\(L\b);
Poisson problem. If A is a nite dierence approximation of the Laplacian, the problem is eciently solved by multigrid methods (e.g., web search for matlab multigrid).

20

8.2 Inlined PCG

As discussed in Section 6, it is sometimes advantageous to inline a simple piece of code to tailor it to
a specic application. While most iterative methods are too lengthy for inlining, conjugate gradients
has a short implementation. The value of inlining pcg is that calls to afun and mfun may be inlined.
Beware that in the following code, A must be symmetric positive deniteotherwise, it will not work!
%% Use PCG to
tol = 1e6;
maxit = 20;
x = x0;

solve Ax = b %%
% Convergence tolerance
% Maximum number of iterations
% Set x to initial guess (if no guess is available, use x0 = 0)

Compute w = A x
r = b w;

% r = residual vector

Set p = r, or if using a preconditioner, p = M 1 r

d = r'*p;
for iter = 1:maxit
if norm(p) < tol
break;
end

% PCG converged successfully (small change in x)

Compute w = A p
alpha = e/(p'*w);
x = x + alpha*p;
r = r alpha*w;

Set w = r, or if using a preconditioner, w = M 1 r

if norm(w) < tol && norm(r) < tol
break;
% PCG converged successfully (small residual)
end
dlast = d;
d = r'*w;
p = w + (d/dlast)*p;
end

After the loop, the nal solution is in x. The method converged successfully with accuracy tol if it
encountered a break statement, otherwise, it failed or needed more iterations. The relative residual
may be computed by relres = norm(r)/norm(b) after the loop and resvec by storing the value of
norm(r) each iteration.

21

Numerical Integration

Quadrature formulas are numerical approximation of integrals of the form

b

f (x) dx
a

wk f (xk ),
k

where the xk are called the nodes or abscissas and wk are the associated weights. Simpsons rule is
b

f (x) dx
a

h
[f (a) + 4f (a + h) + f (b)] ,
3

h=

ba
.
2

Simpsons rule is a quadrature formula with nodes a, a + h, b and node weights

h 4h h
3, 3 , 3.

Matlab has several functions for quadrature in one dimension:

quad
quadl
quadgk
quadv

adaptive
adaptive
adaptive
adaptive

Simpson
Gauss-Lobatto
Gauss-Kronrod
Simpson

Better for low accuracy and nonsmooth integrands

Higher accuracy with smoother integrands
Oscillatory integrands and high accuracy
Vectorized for multi-valued integrands

The quad- functions are robust and precise, however, they are not very ecient. They use an adaptive renement procedure, and while this reduces the number of function calls, they gain little from
vectorization and incur signicant overhead.
If an application requires approximating an integral whose integrand can be eciently vectorized, using
nonadaptive quadrature may improve speed.
for n = 20:20 % Compute Fourier series coefficients
c(n + 21) = quad(@(x)(exp(sin(x).6).*exp(1i*x*n)),0,pi,1e4);
end

This code runs in 5.16 seconds. In place of quad, using Simpsons composite rule with N = 199 nodes
yields results with comparable accuracy and allows for vectorized computation. Since the integrals are
all over the same interval, the nodes and weights only need to be constructed once.
N = 199; h = pi/(N1);
x = (0:h:pi).';
w = ones(1,N); w(2:2:N1) = 4;

w(3:2:N2) = 2;

w = w*h/3;

% Nodes
% Weights

for n = 20:20
c(n + 21) = w * ( exp(sin(x).6).*exp(1i*x*n) );
end

This version of the code runs in 0.02 seconds (200 times faster). The quadrature is performed by the
dot product multiplication with w. It can be further optimized by replacing the for loop with one
vector-matrix multiply:
[n,x] = meshgrid(20:20, 0:h:pi);
c = w * ( exp(sin(x).6).*exp(1i*x.*n) );

22

For this example, quadv can be used on a multi-valued integrand with similar accuracy and speed,
n = 20:20;
c = quadv(@(x)exp(sin(x).6).*exp(1i.*x.*n),0,pi,1e4);

9.1 One-Dimensional Integration

b
a

h
x
w
I

f (x) dx is approximated by composite Simpsons rule with

=
=
=
=

(b a)/(N1);
(a:h:b).';
ones(1,N); w(2:2:N1) = 4; w(3:2:N2) = 2; w = w*h/3;
w * f(x);
% Approximately evaluate the integral

where N is an odd integer specifying the number of nodes.

A good higher-order choice is 4th-order Gauss-Lobatto [4] (as used by quadl), based on
1
1

N
h
d
x
w
I

=
=
=
=
=
=

1
1
1
f (x) dx 6 f (1) + 5 f ( 5 ) + 5 f ( 5 ) + 1 f (1).
6
6
6

max(3*round((N1)/3),3) + 1; % Adjust N to the closest valid choice

(b a)/(N1);
(3/sqrt(5) 1)*h/2;
(a:h:b).'; x(2:3:N2) = x(2:3:N2) d; x(3:3:N1) = x(3:3:N1) + d;
ones(1,N); w(4:3:N3) = 2; w([2:3:N2,3:3:N1]) = 5; w = w*h/4;
w * f(x);
% Approximately evaluate the integral

The number of nodes N must be such that (N 1)/3 is an integer. If not, the rst line adjusts N to
the closest valid choice. It is usually more accurate than Simpsons rule when f has six continuous
derivatives, f C 6 (a, b).
A disadvantage of this nonadaptive approach is that the accuracy of the result is only indirectly controlled by the parameter N. To guarantee a desired accuracy, either use a generously large value for N
or, if possible, determine the error bounds [6, 7]
Simpsons rule error

4th-order Gauss-Lobatto error

(b a)h4
max f (4) () provided f C 4 (a, b),
ab
180
27(b a)h6
max f (6) () provided f C 6 (a, b),
ab
56000

ba
where h = N 1 . Note that these bounds are valid only when the integrand is suciently dierentiable: f
must have four continuous derivatives for the Simpsons rule error bound, and six continuous derivatives
for 4th-order Gauss-Lobatto.

23

Composite Simpsons rule is a fast and eective default choice. But depending on the situation, other
methods may be faster and more accurate:
If the integrand is expensive to evaluate, or if high accuracy is required and the error bounds
above are too dicult to compute, use one of Matlabs adaptive methods. Otherwise, consider
composite methods.
Use higher-order methods (like Gauss-Lobatto/quadl) for very smooth integrands and lower-order
methods for less smooth integrands.
Use the substitution u =

1
1x

or Gauss-Laguerre quadrature for innite-domain integrals like

.
0

9.2 Multidimensional Integration

b

An approach for evaluating double integrals of the form a c f (x, y) dy dx is to apply one-dimensional
b
quadrature to the outer integral a F (x) dx and then for each x use one-dimensional quadrature over
d
the inner dimension to approximate F (x) = c f (x, y) dy. The following code does this with composite
Simpsons rule with NxNy nodes:
%%% Construct Simpson nodes and weights over x %%%
h = (b a)/(Nx1);
x = (a:h:b).';
wx = ones(1,Nx); wx(2:2:Nx1) = 4; wx(3:2:Nx2) = 2;

wx = w*h/3;

%%% Construct Simpson nodes and weights over y %%%

h = (d c)/(Ny1);
y = (c:h:d).';
wy = ones(1,Ny); wy(2:2:Ny1) = 4; wy(3:2:Ny2) = 2;

wy = w*h/3;

%%% Combine for twodimensional integration %%%

[x,y] = meshgrid(x,y); x = x(:); y = y(:);
w = wy.'*wx; w = w(:).';
I = w * f(x,y);

% Approximately evaluate the integral

Similarly for three-dimensional integrals, the weights are combined with

[x,y,z] = meshgrid(x,y,z);
w = wy.'*wx; w = w(:)*wz;

x = x(:); y = y(:);
w = w(:).';

z = z(:);

When the integration region is complicated or of high dimension, Monte Carlo integration techniques
are appropriate. The disadvantage is that an N -point Monte Carlo quadrature has error on the
order O( 1 ), so many points are necessary even for moderate accuracy. Suppose that N points,
N
x1 , x2 , . . . , xN , are uniformly randomly selected in a multidimensional region (or volume) . Then
f dV

dV
N

24

f (xn ).
n=1

To integrate a complicated region W that is dicult to sample uniformly, nd an easier region that
contains W and can be sampled [5]. Then
f W dV

f dV =
W

dV
N

f (xn )W (xn ),

W (x) =

n=1

1,
0,

x W,
x W.
/

W (x) is the indicator function of W : W (x) = 1 when x is within region W and W (x) = 0 otherwise.
Multiplying the integrand by W sets contributions from outside of W to zero.
For example, consider nding the center of mass of the shape W dened by cos 2
2

x2 + y 2 x y

and x + y 4. Given the integrals M = W dA, Mx = W x dA, and My = W y dA, the center of
M
mass is ( Mx , My ). The region is contained in the rectangle dened by 2 x 2 and 2 y 2.
M
The following code estimates M , Mx , and My :
%%% Uniformly randomly sample points (x,y) in %%%
x = 4*rand(N,1) 2;
y = 4*rand(N,1) 2;

%%% Restrict the points to region W %%%

i = (cos(2*sqrt(x.2 + y.2)).*x <= y & x.2 + y.2 <= 4);
x = x(i); y = y(i);
%%% Approximately evaluate the integrals %%%
area = 4*4;
% The area of rectangle
M = (area/N) * length(x);
Mx = (area/N) * sum(x);
My = (area/N) * sum(y);

-2
-2

Region W sampled with N = 1500.

The center of mass is (0.5, 0.7).

More generally, if W is a two-dimensional region contained in the rectangle dened by a x b and

c y d, the following code approximates W f dA:
x
y
i
x

=
=
=
=

a + (ba)*rand(N,1);
c + (dc)*rand(N,1);
logical(indicatorW(x,y));
x(i); y = y(i);

area = (ba)*(dc);
I = (area/N) * sum(f(x,y));

% Approximately evaluate the integral

where indicatorW(x,y) is the indicator function W (x, y) for region W .

For renements and variations of Monte Carlo integration, see for example [1].

25

10

Signal Processing

Even without the Signal Processing Toolbox, Matlab is quite capable in signal processing computations. This section lists code snippets to perform several common operations eciently.

Moving-average lter
To compute an N-sample moving average of x with zero padding:
y = filter(ones(N,1)/N,1,x);

For large N, it is faster to use

y = cumsum(x)/N;
y(N+1:end) = y(N+1:end) y(1:endN);

Locating zero-crossings and extrema

To obtain the indices where signal x crosses zero:
i = find(diff(sign(x)));
% The kth zerocrossing lies between x(i(k)) and x(i(k)+1)

Linear interpolation can be used for subsample estimates of zero-crossing locations:

i = find(diff(sign(x)));
i = i x(i)./(x(i+1) x(i));

% Linear interpolation

Since local maximum and minimum points of a signal have zero derivative, their locations can be
estimated from the zero-crossings of diff(x), provided the signal is sampled with suciently ne
resolution. For a coarsely sampled signal, a better estimate is
iMax = find(sign(x(2:end1)x(1:end2))
+ sign(x(2:end1)x(3:end)) >
iMin = find(sign(x(2:end1)x(1:end2))
+ sign(x(2:end1)x(3:end)) <

...
0) + 1;
...
0) + 1;

FFT-based convolution
This line performs FFT-based circular convolution, equivalent to y = filter(b,1,x) except near the
boundaries, provided that length(b) < length(x):
y = ifft(fft(b,length(x)).*fft(x));

For FFT-based zero-padded convolution, equivalent to y = filter(b,1,x),

N = length(x)+length(b)1;
y = ifft(fft(b,N).*fft(x,N));
y = y(1:length(x));

In both code snippets above, y will be complex-valued, even if x and b are both real. To force y to be
real, follow the computation with y = real(y). If you have the Signal Processing Toolbox, it is faster
to use fftfilt for FFT-based, zero-padded ltering.
26

Noncausal ltering and other boundary extensions

For its intended use, the filter command is limited to causal lters, that is, lters that do not involve
future values to the right of the current sample. Furthermore, filter is limited to zero-padded
boundary extension; data beyond the array boundaries are assumed zero as if the data were padded
with zeros.
For two-tap lters, noncausal ltering and other boundary extensions are possible through filters
fourth initial condition argument. Given a boundary extension value padLeft for x(0), the lter
yn = b1 xn + b2 xn1 may be implemented as
y = filter(b,1,x,padLeft*b(2));

Similarly, given a boundary extension value padRight for x(end+1), the lter yn = b1 xn+1 + b2 xn is
implemented as
y = filter(b,1,[x(2:end),padRight],x(1)*b(2));

Choices for padLeft and padRight for various boundary extensions are
Boundary extension
Periodic
Whole-sample symmetric
Half-sample symmetric
Antisymmetric

padLeft
x(end)
x(2)
x(1)
2*x(1)-x(2)

padRight
x(1)
x(end-1)
x(end)
2*x(end)-x(end-1)

It is in principle possible to use a similar approach for longer lters, but ironically, computing the initial
condition itself requires ltering. To implement noncausal ltering and ltering with other boundary
handling, it is usually fastest to pad the input signal, apply filter, and then truncate the result.

Upsampling and Downsampling

Upsample x (insert zeros) by factor p:
y = zeros(length(x)*pp+1,1);
y(1:p:length(x)*p) = x;

% For trailing zeros, use y = zeros(length(x)*p,1);

Downsample x by factor p, where 1 q p:

y = x(q:p:end);

27

Haar Wavelet
This code performs K stages of the Haar wavelet transform on the input data x to produce wavelet
coecients y. The input array x must have length divisible by 2K .
Inverse transform:

Forward transform:
y = x(:); N = length(y);

x = y(:); N = length(x)*pow2(K);

for k = 1:K
tmp = y(1:2:N) + y(2:2:N);
y([1:N/2,N/2+1:N]) = ...
[tmp;y(1:2:N) 0.5*tmp]/sqrt(2);
N = N/2;
end

for k = 1:K
N = N*2;
tmp = x(N/2+1:N) + 0.5*x(1:N/2);
x([1:2:N,2:2:N]) = ...
[tmp;x(1:N/2) tmp]*sqrt(2);
end

Daubechies 4-Tap Wavelet

This code implements the Daubechies 4-tap wavelet in lifting scheme form [2]. The input array x must
have length divisible by 2K . Filtering is done with symmetric boundary handling.
Forward transform:

Inverse transform:

U = 0.25*[2sqrt(3),sqrt(3)];
ScaleS = (sqrt(3) 1)/sqrt(2);
ScaleD = (sqrt(3) + 1)/sqrt(2);

U = 0.25*[2sqrt(3),sqrt(3)];
ScaleS = (sqrt(3) 1)/sqrt(2);
ScaleD = (sqrt(3) + 1)/sqrt(2);

y = x(:); N = length(y);

x = y(:); N = length(x)*pow2(K);

for k = 1:K
N = N/2;
y1 = y(1:2:2*N);
y2 = y(2:2:2*N) + sqrt(3)*y1;
y1 = y1 + filter(U,1,...
y2([2:N,max(N1,1)]),y2(1)*U(2));
y(1:2*N) = [ScaleS*...
(y2 y1([min(2,N),1:N1]));ScaleD*y1];
end

for k
y1
y2
y1

= 1:K
= x(N+1:2*N)/ScaleD;
= x(1:N)/ScaleS + y1([min(2,N),1:N1]);
= y1 filter(U,1,...
y2([2:N,max(N1,1)]),y2(1)*U(2));
x([1:2:2*N,2:2:2*N]) = [y1;y2 sqrt(3)*y1];
N = 2*N;
end

To use periodic boundary handling rather than symmetric boundary handling, change appearances of
[2:N,max(N-1,1)] to [2:N,1] and [min(2,N),1:N-1] to [N,1:N-1].

28

11

Miscellaneous

Clip a value without using if statements

To clip (or clamp, bound, or saturate) a value to within a range, the straightforward implementation is
if x <
x =
elseif
x =
end

lowerBound
lowerBound;
x > upperBound
upperBound;

Unfortunately, this is slow. A faster method is to use the min and max functions:
x = max(x,lowerBound);
x = min(x,upperBound);

% Clip elements from below, force x >= lowerBound

% Clip elements from above, force x <= upperBound

Moreover, it works per-element if x a matrix of any size.

Convert any array into a column vector

It is often useful to force an array to be a column vector, for example, when writing a function expecting
a column vector as an input. This simple trick will convert the input array of any shape and number
of dimensions to a column vector, even if the input is already a column vector.
x = x(:);

% Convert x to a column vector

Similarly, x = x(:,:) reduces an N-d array to 2D, where the number of rows stays the same.

Find the min/max of a matrix or N-d array

Given a matrix input (with no other inputs), the min and max functions operate along the columns,
nding the extreme element in each column. To nd the extreme element over the entire matrix, one
way for a two-dimensional matrix is min(min(A)). A better method that works regardless of the number
of dimensions and determines the extreme elements location is
[MinValue, MinIndex] = min(A(:));

% Find the minimum element in A

% The minimum value is MinValue, the index is MinIndex
MinSub = ind2sub(size(A), MinIndex); % Convert MinIndex to subscripts

The minimum element is A(MinIndex) or A(MinSub(1), MinSub(2), . . .) as a subscript reference.

(Similarly, replace min with max for maximum value.)

29

Flood lling
Flood lling, like the bucket tool in image editors, can be elegantly written as a recursive function:
function I = flood1(I,c,x,y)
% Flood fills image I from point (x,y) with color c.
c2 = I(y,x);
I(y,x) = c;
if
if
if
if

x
x
y
y

>
<
>
<

1
size(I,2)
1
size(I,1)

&
&
&
&

I(y,x1)
I(y,x+1)
I(y1,x)
I(y+1,x)

==
==
==
==

c2
c2
c2
c2

&
&
&
&

I(y,x1)
I(y,x+1)
I(y1,x)
I(y+1,x)

=
=
=
=

c,
c,
c,
c,

I
I
I
I

=
=
=
=

flood1(I,c,x1,y);
flood1(I,c,x+1,y);
flood1(I,c,x,y1);
flood1(I,c,x,y+1);

end
end
end
end

Being a highly recursive function, this is inecient in Matlab. The following code is faster:
function I = flood2(I,c,x,y)
% Flood fills image I from point (x,y) with color c.
LastFlood = zeros(size(I));
Flood = LastFlood;
Flood(y,x) = 1;
Mask = (I == I(y,x));
FloodFilter = [0,1,0; 1,1,1; 0,1,0];
while any(LastFlood(:) = Flood(:))
LastFlood = Flood;
Flood = conv2(Flood,FloodFilter,'same') & Mask;
end
I(find(Flood)) = c;

The key is the conv2 two-dimensional convolution function. Flood lling a 4040-pixel region takes
1.168 seconds with flood1 and 0.067 seconds with flood2.

Vectorized use of set on GUI objects

While not a speed improvement, a trick for cleaner code is vectorized use of set on GUI objects. A
serious graphical user interface (GUI) can have dozens of objects and many properties to congure. For
example, to dene three edit boxes with white text background and left text alignment:
uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.9,0.7,0.05], ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'left', 'Style', 'edit', 'BackgroundColor', [1,1,1]);
uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.8,0.7,0.05], ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'left', 'Style', 'edit', 'BackgroundColor', [1,1,1]);
uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.7,0.7,0.05], ...
'HorizontalAlignment', 'left', 'Style', 'edit', 'BackgroundColor', [1,1,1]);

30

A vectorized call to set reduces this to

h(1) = uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.9,0.7,0.05]);
h(2) = uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.8,0.7,0.05]);
h(3) = uicontrol('Units', 'normalized', 'Position', [0.1,0.7,0.7,0.05]);
set(h, 'HorizontalAlignment', 'left', 'Style', 'edit','BackgroundColor', [1,1,1]);

12

Further Reading

For more reading on vectorization, see the MathWorks vectorization guide:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/tech-notes/1100/1109.shtml
For further details and examples on JIT Acceleration, see for example
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk_r13/help/techdoc/matlab_prog/ch7_perf.html
For a thorough guide on ecient array manipulation, see MATLAB array manipulation tips and tricks:
http://home.online.no/~pjacklam/matlab/doc/mtt
For numerical methods with Matlab, see Numerical Computing with MATLAB :
http://www.mathworks.com/moler

MEX
In a coding situation that cannot be optimized any further, keep in mind that the Matlab language
is intended primarily for easy prototyping rather than high-speed computation. In some cases, an
appropriate solution is Matlab Executable (MEX) external interface functions. With a C or Fortran
compiler, it is possible to produce a MEX function that can be called from within Matlab in the same
as an M-function. The typical speed improvement over equivalent M-code is easily ten-fold.
Installations of Matlab include an example of MEX under directory <MATLAB>/extern/examples/mex.
In this directory, a function yprime is written as M-code (yprime.m) and equivalent C (yprime.c)
and Fortran (yprime.f) MEX source code. For more information, see the MathWorks MEX-les guide
http://www.mathworks.com/support/tech-notes/1600/1605.html
For information on compiling MEX les with the GNU compiler collection (GCC), see
http://gnumex.sourceforge.net
Beware, MEX is an ambitious alternative to M-code. Writing MEX les requires learning some low-level
details about Matlab, and takes more time to develop than M-code.

31

Matlab Compiler
The Matlab Compiler generates a standalone executable from M-code. For product information and
documentation, see
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/compiler

References
[1] A. Bielajew. The Fundamentals of the Monte Carlo Method for Neutral and Charged Particle
Transport. University of Michigan, class notes. Available online at
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~bielajew/MCBook/book.pdf
[2] I. Daubechies and W. Sweldens. Factoring Wavelet Transforms into Lifting Steps. Sep. 1996.
[3] J. W. Demmel. Applied Numerical Linear Algebra. SIAM, 1997.
[4] W. Gander and W. Gautschi. Adaptive QuadratureRevisited, BIT, vol. 40, pp. 84-101, 2000.
[5] W. Press, B. Flannery, S. Teukolsky and W. Vetterling. Numerical Recipes. Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
[6] E. Weisstein. Lobatto Quadrature. From MathWorldA Wolfram Web Resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LobattoQuadrature.html
[7] E. Weisstein. Simpsons Rule. From MathWorldA Wolfram Web Resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SimpsonsRule.html

32